The ev­i­den­tiary hear­ings in­to the law­suit brought against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley by Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal wrapped up yes­ter­day, with the judge an­nounc­ing that she will give her de­ci­sion on the mat­ter on March 8, 2024.

The vir­tu­al ses­sion be­fore Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in in the Port-of-Spain Civ­il Court be­gan around 10 am, with se­nior po­lit­i­cal re­porter at the Trinidad Ex­press, An­na Ram­dass, pro­vid­ing tes­ti­mo­ny and con­text on the ar­ti­cle she penned which al­leged­ly im­pugned Mooni­lal’s char­ac­ter back on Jan­u­ary 6, 2020.

The mat­ter, which first came up for hear­ing on Mon­day and con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, saw Ram­dass tes­ti­fy­ing as the last de­fen­dant, as she is cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion out of the coun­try.

Mooni­lal sued Row­ley, along with the Trinidad Ex­press and Ram­dass, fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in re­la­tion to the Eden Gar­dens Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, Freeport.

Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la, who is lead­ing Mooni­lal’s le­gal team, wast­ed no time in wad­ing in­to Ram­dass, over what he de­scribed as her dis­re­gard for the prin­ci­ples of fair and re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism. Lal­la pressed her to say why she had failed to con­tact Mooni­lal for his re­sponse to the al­leged al­le­ga­tions ut­tered by Row­ley at the time.

Mooni­lal filed the defama­tion law­suit three years ago, af­ter Row­ley re­port­ed­ly sul­lied his char­ac­ter in state­ments al­lud­ing to thiev­ery by peo­ple as­so­ci­at­ed with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

The al­leged com­ments were made at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) me­dia re­cep­tion on Jan­u­ary 8, 2020.

In re­spond­ing to Lal­la’s ques­tions, Ram­dass de­fend­ed her­self against in­sin­u­a­tions that she had failed to pro­vide Mooni­lal with a fair hear­ing – as she ex­plained that the sto­ry at the time cen­tered around get­ting a re­sponse from Row­ley re­gard­ing the calls by the Op­po­si­tion for the re­moval of Camille Robin­son-Reg­is from the Cab­i­net as a re­sult of al­leged fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety.

Ram­dass said there were sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion be­ing lev­elled against for­mer UNC as­so­ciates at the time. She said she had not specif­i­cal­ly named any­one, al­though she con­firmed Row­ley had re­ferred to Mooni­lal, and for­mer Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John and “one Ram­bachan.”

Claim­ing Row­ley had raised al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion gen­er­al­ly, Ram­dass said there had been no need to con­tact Mooni­lal for a re­sponse, as that had not been the fo­cus of the ar­ti­cle at the time – and his re­sponse could have been pur­sued as a fol­low-up.

Ram­dass added that al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion re­gard­ing Eden Gar­dens had been re­port­ed ex­ten­sive­ly at the time and as such, she paid it lit­tle to no im­por­tance.

She said Row­ley’s re­sponse, which he had di­rect­ed her to get from Fix­ing T&T’s Kirk Wait­he, had been the main goal, as any­thing the Prime Min­is­ter said was treat­ed as “im­por­tant and ur­gent.”

Deny­ing her and the Ex­press News­pa­per’s on­ly fo­cus had been on fu­elling pub­lic in­ter­est, Ram­dass said time con­straints and dead­lines would al­so have played a part in why she had not con­tact­ed for­mer UNC of­fi­cials to re­spond to the claims by Row­ley.

Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who led Row­ley’s le­gal team, es­tab­lished that Ram­dass had, in fact, con­tact­ed Robin­son-Reg­is and for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith for com­ments which were al­so pub­lished on the day in ques­tion.

Two sep­a­rate law­suits have been filed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in re­la­tion to Eden Gar­dens, but Mooni­lal has not been sued in those mat­ters, which are still pend­ing be­fore the court and are sub ju­dice.

Ram­dass tes­ti­fied that when she con­tact­ed Row­ley on the day, it was not in re­la­tion to any mat­ters of al­leged cor­rup­tion about Eden Gar­dens, SIS, OAS, or the Curepe In­ter­change.

As the pro­ceed­ings end­ed, Gob­in sched­uled dates for sub­mis­sions by Lal­la on De­cem­ber 8; and Mendes for Jan­u­ary 8, 2024, re­spec­tive­ly – while she re­served the de­ci­sion for March 8, 2024.